Some industrial articles of clothing, such as protective gloves, are designed with an objective of protecting the wearer's skin. This has been difficult to achieve, consistent with providing garments that are comfortable to wear. Ideally, certain such articles should be made from yarns that have themselves superior cut-resistance, so that the gloves or other garments or articles themselves resist cutting by sharp instruments, edges or other hazards in the workplace. There is a need for an improved yarn of such cut-resistance.
Many synthetic fibers provide superior industrial yarns. For instance, the strength, heat resistance and other useful properties of aramid fibers, such as PPDT, poly (p-phenylene terephthalamide), sold commercially by Du Pont under the tradename "KEVLAR" is well known in this respect. It would be desirable, however, to provide yarns having improved cut-resistance, and with a soft covering, such as to enable industrial work garments, for instance, including protective gloves, to be made in a form that is comfortable to wear and yet can protect the wearer against cuts and like hazards.
The problem has been solved by the present invention, which provides a way to incorporate a continuous wire in the core of a wrapped yarn of the type disclosed (in the decade of the sixties) by Field in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,365,872 and 3,367,095, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference. Briefly, Field taught a wrapped yarn of a core of at least two continuous integral core elements of relatively straight textile fibers (for instance continuous filament yarn bundles or spun yarns from staple fibers) and surface wrappings of discontinuous textile fibers (for instance natural or synthetic staple) tightly twisted about the core and with portions locked into the core, and a false twisting process for combining the two types of textile fibers to form his wrapped yarns. Field discloses "all synthetic and natural fibers and filaments, and combinations thereof" as being suitable raw materials for making his yarns (col. 3, line 21 et seq of U.S. Pat. No. 3,365,872) and lists several compositions that include metal fibers, glass fibers, and asbestos fibers (lines 50-51). Field did not, however, suggest incorporating a continuous metal wire into the core of his yarns, and when attempts were made, according to the invention, to try and incorporated a continuous metal wire into wrapped yarns of the types specifically disclosed by Field, several practical problems were encountered, and products resulting from
such attempts were unsuitable for various reasons.